SEO Methods / Tips You many not already know

My background:

I run the online marketing department at a medium sized internet company that provides services to consumers that can be purchased online. I have been in the SEO scene for quite some time, with experience in multiple niches. I am responsible for $30,000 revenue per month, from around 40-50 sites that we work on.
Our rankings are solidly in the top 5 for our main keywords, some of them with 43B SEOC. We achieve this by always being ahead of the curve, and with me working hours upon hours a day to ensure that our campaign is running properly.

Here is some of the knowledge I have come across in my own studies:

tl;dr
1. scrapebox works to money site if done properly
2. scrapebox helps you disguise and hide bought links
3. spun content more worthless than ever [see explanation]
4. 3% / 400w is old news
5. in page anchors work nicely

Scrapebox with $ site?
1) Scrapebox runs to a money site is one of the best things you can do. It allows for faster indexing of your page (all of my websites are crawled at least 3x a day), allows for higher pagerank, and once in a while you will get a nice d/f link.

Think about this: if running a SB blast against your money site can cause it to get sandboxed and or banned, why wouldn't you run this against your competitors?

I have experimented with many sites (we run close to 50) and I have concluded that Scrapebox can be extremely helpful, even for your money site.

Here is how to make sure you are properly running SB (when targeting your Money Site)

Step 1: Use the keyword scraper to find keywords in your industry not just your exact niche. This is to make your website have a larger base of links, and from various sources. This looks semi-natural to Google. Think of this metaphor:

In high school, the popular guy was liked by everyone, including the "losers". The same goes for your website; make sure everyone links to you, including the losers.

Step2: Rescrape your generated list, and then copy the keywords into your main keyword area to scrape from. Choose one of the footprints (or use a custom one, theres tons of them floating around BHW). Scrape your list and take the list of blogs that come back.

Use "click here" and "link" and "here" as some of the anchor text choices for your links. This is a HUGE, HUGE important step. Think about it, when a blogger puts a link in their paragraph about you, do they anchor your exact keyword? Not always. The will also put those generic click phrases, as it is a more natural way of link building. These links will not provide extra keyword relevance, but they will make your link building more natural.

Run a blast to the harvested list, and profit. I have been steadily increasing my rankings in keywords that are extremely competitive, with the help of scrapebox.

2) Scrapebox is not going to rank you exclusively, but I use the links as the "crap" part of my link scheme. e.g. scraping allows for purchasing links, as you are getting linked from a lot of different places. I have been getting away with bought links for a long time now, mostly because of the amount of links we are getting to the money site, shitty and not shitty.

So, you can buy links if you hide them in a giant pile of SB links. Do this with caution though, this is not simple to do.

3) Spun content with anchored links is extremely dangerous, and will eventually hurt you. Right now, you may not be affected as much, but Google's priority right now is to devalue spun content. I would move to outsourced articles, or be a trooper and write them yourself.

EDIT: People seem to disagree with me here. This is my opinion, and here is some more explanation.
Right now, as we stand, spun content works well. In fact, I still use spun content for certain things (never on my own sites, except for a couple instances). I believe that EVENTUALLY Google will find a way to devalue spun work, and it will understand more about mathematically. All I am saying is that spinning is not an effective long term strategy; as soon as Google cracks the code, a lot of rankings will drop.

4) 3% density 400 words is GARBAGE. Google KNOWS this is the standard amount, and it DOES NOT WORK so well! Instead: 700 words with 2% density, or 400 words with 1.5 density. That means only 6 times. And I wouldn't even do it 6 times. There is no incentive to putting a keyword more than a couple times in a paragraph, it doesn't make you any more relevant.

5) In page anchors help Google crawl your pages and understand what your pages are about. An in page anchor works like this: You first create a link, which when clicked, will automatically scroll the browser to the destination in the same page.

For example, if at the bottom of your page you have an image of a bicycle, and you have a link at the top of the page that says "bicycle", upon clicking the link, the internet browser will scroll to the image of the bicycle:


These anchors also help you get sitelinks.

That's it for now. If you found this helpful and want more tips, just let me know and I'll update the thread.

Edit: People seemed interested in more info, so I made a guide:

Looks like some very useful info there. I'm learning the paths of SEO and I'll surely apply them. Please keep updating the thread. It never hurts to hear from someone who has good experience.

nice post, + repped.

Question: I use spun content for my web 2.0- properties. How does google know if its spun or original when it's 70-80% unique? will these types of links hurt my site?

hameem said:

Looks like some very useful info there. I'm learning the paths of SEO and I'll surely apply them. Please keep updating the thread. It never hurts to hear from someone who has good experience.

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Anything in specific you'd like to know more about?

thetermy said:

Anything in specific you'd like to know more about?

Click to expand...

I'll get back to you with questions later.

lucius said:

nice post, + repped.

Question: I use spun content for my web 2.0- properties. How does google know if its spun or original when it's 70-80% unique? will these types of links hurt my site?

Click to expand...

Here are some ways Google is likely trying to fight spun content:

Google {does not|doesn't} yet {know|know for sure| know clearly} that this is {spun|randomized|random}, but the sentence {structure|placement of words} is consistently in the same place.

TBS has a list of synonyms that can be randomized and automatically spun. Google is very likely trying to reverse engineer this, and "unspin" them.

Alternatively, Google may try using different synomyms for different sentences and see if there are exact match.

Also, in spun content ,the anchored term is likely similar or the same, or the URL is likely the same from each paragraph.

_______________________
Summarized: Google doesn't yet KNOW how to find this, but it is their every day effort of 1000's of engineers to find a way to get rid of spun content.

My point is that it works now, but may not work in the future.

I am curious about your take on spun content too. In my mind, Google will have a very hard time distinguishing between spun content and content from someone whose mother tongue is a foreign language. Thus, devaluing spun content would be racist. I have some sites with spun content on them that have not been effected by any algorithm updates. It seems like pure speculation to say that it is what will come in the future.

Otherwise, a lot of good info here.

Yeah, a lot of spun content just reads like broken English.

LBrown said:

I am curious about your take on spun content too. In my mind, Google will have a very hard time distinguishing between spun content and content from someone whose mother tongue is a foreign language. Thus, devaluing spun content would be racist. I have some sites with spun content on them that have not been effected by any algorithm updates. It seems like pure speculation to say that it is what will come in the future.

Otherwise, a lot of good info here.

Click to expand...

I spin content all day. I use it all the time. I also think that in the long run it will not work as well. Spun content is generally lower quality writing, and Google will use numerous methods to fight it.

I will say this 100 times, Google's top priority right now is ridding the internet of "Spam" and they have thousands of minds trying to find a way to get rid of Spun content.

I agree about spun content. I spin a certain amount of articles to a folder then read them over and do minor corrections for Web 2 properties. Never use spun material on your money sites. For crap article directories blasting your Web 2's and other tiers, it really doesn't matter IMO. Also its a good idea to pursue "quality" spinning instead of auto spinning so your links are approved and stick as outlined here:
http://www.ubertoolz.com/UberCubezCreation.html

Well to be safe rewrite a good article to change the structure and THEN spin it, so you are spinning a unique (in googles eyes) article. In addition there is duplicate or near duplicate content on MANY websites, there is only so many ways to talk about how badly a football team lost the previous week. I think the search engine expects some level of duplicate content.

Very helpful post. Does the in page anchor works like the SEO Auto Links & Related Posts plugin in wordpress?

Spinned content is poison and it going to kill us all , soon. The OP shares wonderful insights.

Heard about- white smoke and stylewriter. These software can detect gramatical errors, and suggest proper writing. I really think, if software like this exist - the big G probably must have a sort of super gramatical check algorithm.

I think we should use less spin content.

Nice post. Great contribution. Everyone should be able to learn from this post.

Thanks for sharing your research. As for spun content, I tend to use my own thesaurus with SpinnerChief and I try to use spun phrases rather than synonyms. I have found that oftentimes it takes just as long to spin the article to a quality I am happy with as it does just to rewrite the damn thing lol. The other point I would like to agree wholeheartedly on is in page anchors. I love them, though not to overuse, and they give the reader a nice experience when done well.

LBrown said:

I am curious about your take on spun content too. In my mind, Google will have a very hard time distinguishing between spun content and content from someone whose mother tongue is a foreign language. Thus, devaluing spun content would be racist. I have some sites with spun content on them that have not been effected by any algorithm updates. It seems like pure speculation to say that it is what will come in the future.

Otherwise, a lot of good info here.

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The readability is only one factor. What the OP is suggesting is that Google can easily connect your spun article to the other 943 spun versions of the same article, particularly if it's auto-spun using common synonyms.

It's not so much that spinning is dead, it's that basic word level synonym spinning leaves an obvious footprint, and I think it's a pretty clear to see what direction G is moving in regards to this type of content.

That's not to say that quick spinning doesn't still have it's uses. Personally, I build my first tier 2.0s with all unique content and 600+ word articles, but I will do SENuke or AMR blasts to those urls for indexing and to pass a little juice, even if it's only temporary.

Of course, some will say spun content is still working for them in a wider capacity, and I'm sure it is...to a degree. For me personally, nothing has worked better than an ever-growing network of quality 2.0 sites with unique content. It creates a solid foundation to build on instead having to always build it over.

songer said:

The readability is only one factor. What the OP is suggesting is that Google can easily connect your spun article to the other 943 spun versions of the same article, particularly if it's auto-spun using common synonyms.

It's not so much that spinning is dead, it's that basic word level synonym spinning leaves an obvious footprint, and I think it's a pretty clear to see what direction G is moving in regards to this type of content.

That's not to say that quick spinning doesn't still have it's uses. Personally, I build my first tier 2.0s with all unique content and 600+ word articles, but I will do SENuke or AMR blasts to those urls for indexing and to pass a little juice, even if it's only temporary.

Of course, some will say spun content is still working for them in a wider capacity, and I'm sure it is...to a degree. For me personally, nothing has worked better than an ever-growing network of quality 2.0 sites with unique content. It creates a solid foundation to build on instead having to always build it over.

Click to expand...

Said better than I can.

songer said:

The readability is only one factor. What the OP is suggesting is that Google can easily connect your spun article to the other 943 spun versions of the same article, particularly if it's auto-spun using common synonyms.

It's not so much that spinning is dead, it's that basic word level synonym spinning leaves an obvious footprint, and I think it's a pretty clear to see what direction G is moving in regards to this type of content.

That's not to say that quick spinning doesn't still have it's uses. Personally, I build my first tier 2.0s with all unique content and 600+ word articles, but I will do SENuke or AMR blasts to those urls for indexing and to pass a little juice, even if it's only temporary.

Of course, some will say spun content is still working for them in a wider capacity, and I'm sure it is...to a degree. For me personally, nothing has worked better than an ever-growing network of quality 2.0 sites with unique content. It creates a solid foundation to build on instead having to always build it over.

Click to expand...

I think the OP is definitely onto something with his warning of spun content. songer gives a good explanation of what specifically is important.

There was a great thread a good while back started by "seo20" that speaks to this very same issue... although fairly technical, on how G can and will get better at tracking through the use of "ngrams".

MagicMike said:

I think the OP is definitely onto something with his warning of spun content. songer gives a good explanation of what specifically is important.

There was a great thread a good while back started by "seo20" that speaks to this very same issue... although fairly technical, on how G can and will get better at tracking through the use of "ngrams".

Code:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/284937-you-dont-know-sh-t-about-search-engine-optimization-if-you-dont-read-understand.html

Click to expand...

That is kind of what I was getting at, but he did a better job of explaining it in technical terms.

i am doing part of this too and i have great results
anyway thanks for the explanation